By this point, most of my readers will be familiar with the fabulous work being done (almost single-handedly) by Ian McCollum for his site ForgottenWeapons.com, and those who aren’t should click through and subscribe to his channel for some of the best gun-related content on the web. However, yesterday Ian released a the first of multiple videos on a rifle family that is very near and dear to my heart, that being the Winchester G30 line of development. For a rare look at the rifle as helmed by Ed Browning (half-brother to the famous John Moses Browning), watch the video below:

In truth, the G30 isn’t really one rifle design, but several, as it passed through the hands of two major designers in the late 1930s and early 1940s, until it was eventually abandoned at the end of World War II. Many of those rifles are housed in the Cody Museum collection, and Ian is set to cover those firearms as well, so definitely stay tuned for that.

For extra G30-related content, you can check out the photo below of the designer himself with a military model G30, possibly the very military model featured in the video (although apparently with a different upper handguard), or you can read all of my article To Challenge A Newly Won Throne: The Rise And Fall of The Light Rifle, Part II. I also recommend watching Ian’s video on the Colt Model 1929 prototype, which was Browning’s earlier development that became the G30, that video is available here.

Nathaniel is a history enthusiast and firearms hobbyist whose primary interest lies in military small arms technological developments beginning with the smokeless powder era. In addition to contributing to The Firearm Blog, he runs 196,800 Revolutions Per Minute, a blog devoted to modern small arms design and theory. He can be reached via email at nathaniel.f@staff.thefirearmblog.com.

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Mmmtacos

To paraphrase: “Ed Browning wasn’t as good of a designer as his half-brother, John Moses Browning, but he wasn’t an idiot.”

Ian, love the videos, but being close to as good a designer as JMB is a pretty lofty feat in the first place (several have done innovations on par with JMB, but he has done so many innovations in and of himself). I would imagine it goes without saying that if someone is compared to JMB in the first place then they’ve earned enough merit on that alone as a designer.